UPDATE 1-Chile's Collahuasi says quake impact minor, port OK to open

SANTIAGO, April 8 (Reuters) - The CEO of Chilean copper
miner Collahuasi said on Tuesday he sees only a "minor" impact
on its production from last week's massive earthquake in the
north of the country, adding it has been authorized to
reactivate its Patache port, which was closed after the temblor
spawned a tsunami.

"We just received authorization and a ship has already
entered the port to load," Chief Executive Officer Jorge Gomez
told Reuters on the sidelines of the CESCO/CRU copper conference
in the capital, Santiago.

Collahuasi is a partnership between Glencore Xstrata
and Anglo American PLC.

The port of Patache, which is where Collahuasi ships copper
concentrate from, had to close due to the sea swells and tsunami
that followed the 8.2 magnitude quake.

But the earthquake's impact on production at Collahuasi, one
of the world's largest copper mines, is only "minor," Gomez
said.

Collahuasi, perched 4,440 meters above sea level in the
rugged northern Andean region of Tarapaca, had to temporarily
suspend operations after evacuating workers following the quake.

Copper operations in Chile, the world's top producer, were
mostly unscathed by the major earthquake that struck the
mineral-rich north late on April 1.

The quake left six people dead and thousands of homes
damaged and has been followed by dozens of aftershocks,
including a strong 7.6 magnitude on April 2 that sparked another
tsunami alert.
(Reporting by Fabian Cambero, writing by Anthony Esposito,
editing by G Crosse)